One of the most incredible events to take place in the Church was the conversion of the Apostle Paul, the former Christian persecutor who became Christs chief Apostle. In Paul: The Great Scandal orthodox theologian Vassilios Bakoyannis looks at the life and teachings of the holy Apostle, the lamb that tamed the lion, and presents colorful events and details about his life that captivate the reader into full admiration for his great power and tremendous victories, all in the name of Christ.

This is an examination of the apostle Paul within the Second Century, focused upon the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. This volume looks at the imprint and influence that the writings of the Apostle Paul had in the second century examining the Pauline corpus in conjunction with key second century figures and texts, such as "Ignatius", "Polycarp", and the "Epistle of Diognetus". As such this volume is an exercise in the Wirkungsgeschichte or 'effective-history' of Paul. It investigates the impact of Paul's legacy and examines how this legacy shaped the Christianity that emerged in the second century as represented by the Apostolic Fathers, the early Christian Apologists, and among Gnostic and Judeo Christian groups. The contributors are experts in their respective areas. Each contributor in turn examines how a given document or group reflects the influence of Paul's life, letters, and theology and the various and even competing ways in which Paul's legacy may be seen to have been appropriated. As such this is the first volume to present an extended juxtaposition of Paul's thought with such a wide selection of writings from the second century. Formerly the "Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement", a book series that explores the many aspects of New Testament study including historical perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and theological, cultural and contextual approaches, "The Early Christianity in Context" series, a part of "JSNTS", examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the third century CE. The series places Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context. "European Seminar on Christian Origins" and "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Supplement" are also part of "JSNTS".

Christ Without Adam: Subjectivity and Sexual Difference in the Philosophers' Paul

The apostle Paul deals extensively with gender, embodiment, and desire in his authentic letters, yet many of the contemporary philosophers interested in his work downplay these aspects of his thought. Christ Without Adam is the first book to examine the role of gender and sexuality in the turn to the apostle Paul in recent Continental philosophy. It builds a constructive proposal for embodied Christian theological anthropology in conversation with - and in contrast to - the 'Paulinisms' of Stanislas Breton, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek.

Paul's letters bequeathed a crucial anthropological aporia to the history of Christian thought, insofar as the apostle sought to situate embodied human beings typologically with reference to Adam and Christ, but failed to work out the place of sexual difference within this classification. As a result, the space between Adam and Christ has functioned historically as a conceptual and temporal interval in which Christian anthropology poses and re-poses theological dilemmas of embodied difference. This study follows the ways in which the appropriations of Paul by Breton, Badiou, and Zizek have either sidestepped or collapsed this interval, a crucial component in their articulations of a universal Pauline subject. As a result, sexual difference fails to materialize in their readings as a problem with any explicit force. Against these readings, Dunning asserts the importance of the Pauline Adam-Christ typology, not as a straightforward resource but as a witness to a certain necessary failure - the failure of the Christian tradition to resolve embodied difference without remainder. This failure, he argues, is constructive in that it reveals the instability of sexual difference, both masculine and feminine, within an anthropological paradigm that claims to be universal yet is still predicated on male bodies.

In this major work, James D. G. Dunn brings together more than two decades of vigorous and creative work on interpreting the letters of Paul into an integrated, full-scale study of Paul's thought.

Using Paul's letter to the Romans as the foundation for constructing a fuller exposition of Paul's whole theology, Dunn's thematic treatment clearly describes Paul's teaching on such topics as God, humankind, sin, christology, salvation, the church, and the Christian life. In the process Dunn engages in a concise way what other important scholars have said regarding each area of inquiry.

The Theology of Paul the Apostle represents a major contribution to the ongoing discussion regarding what Paul's theology is and what its continuing relevance is to the study and practice of religion and theology.

The apostle Paul has been justifiably described as the first and greatest Christian theologian. His letters were among the earliest documents to be included in the New Testament and, as such, they shaped Christian thinking from the beginning. As a missionary, theologian and pastor Paul's own wrestling with theological and ethical questions of his day is paradigmatic for Christian theology, not least for Christianity's own identity and continuing relationship with Judaism. The Cambridge Companion to St Paul provides an important assessment of this apostle and a fresh appreciation of his continuing significance today. With eighteen chapters written by a team of leading international specialists on Paul, the Companion provides a sympathetic and critical overview of the apostle, covering his life and work, his letters and his theology. The volume will provide an invaluable starting point and helpful cross check for subsequent studies.

The Third Durham-Tubingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (Durham, September, 1994). This volume explores the perennial debate over Paul's understanding of and attitude toward the Mosaic Law. Sixteen outstanding international scholars examine the key passages in the letters of Paul that deal with the Jewish law. Their work not only provides a clearer view of the issues involved but also shows the range of interpretive approaches now being used in this important area of study.

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul challenges the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual, mainly cognitive and metaphorical, ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, such as 'being in Christ', 'having God's pneuma (spirit), Christ's pneuma, and Christ himself in one', must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. Engberg-Pedersen shows that Paul's cosmology, not least his understanding of the pneuma, was a materialist, bodily one: the pneuma was a physical element that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into 'pneumatic bodies'. This literal understanding of the future events is then traced back to the Pauline present as Engberg-Pedersen considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of a range of central themes like his own conversion, his mission, the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way the apostle took the pneuma to inform his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's world view, an explicitly philosophically oriented form of interpretation ('philosophical exegesis') is employed, in which the interpreter applies categories of interpretation that make sense philosophically, whether in an ancient or a modern context. For this enterprise Engberg-Pedersen draws in particular on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology - as opposed to the Platonic, immaterialist and dualistic categories that underlie traditional readings of Paul - and on modern ideas on 'religious experience', 'self', 'body' and 'practice' derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. In this way Paul is shown to have spelled out philosophically his Jewish, 'apocalyptic' world view, which remains a central feature of his thought.

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul challenges the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual, mainly cognitive and metaphorical, ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, such as 'being in Christ', 'having God's pneuma (spirit), Christ's pneuma, and Christ himself in one', must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. Engberg-Pedersen shows that Paul's cosmology, not least his understanding of the pneuma, was a materialist, bodily one: the pneuma was a physical element that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into 'pneumatic bodies'. This literal understanding of the future events is then traced back to the Pauline present as Engberg-Pedersen considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of a range of central themes like his own conversion, his mission, the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way the apostle took the pneuma to inform his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's world view, an explicitly philosophically oriented form of interpretation ('philosophical exegesis') is employed, in which the interpreter applies categories of interpretation that make sense philosophically, whether in an ancient or a modern context. For this enterprise Engberg-Pedersen draws in particular on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology - as opposed to the Platonic, immaterialist and dualistic categories that underlie traditional readings of Paul - and on modern ideas on 'religious experience', 'self', 'body' and 'practice' derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. In this way Paul is shown to have spelled out philosophically his Jewish, 'apocalyptic' world view, which remains a central feature of his thought.

This book is written for a wide range of interested readers, including students, pastors, church workers and others interested in learning about Paul as a person and his work. The author deals with Paul and the book of Acts, the circumstances that led Paul to write each letter, and his responses to those circumstances. A unique aspect of the work is Paul's emphasis on the morality of the believers to whom he was writing--his "ways in Christ" as he taught "them everywhere in every church." Brief discussions of Paul's language help to enlighten meanings of his thought often overlooked. His thought is presented in light of his own times, not those of the Reformation or our own. Material from the Old Testament, Qumran, and pagan sources makes readers more aware of that fact. Paul was not writing for Christians in the modern sense of the term, because it was not in use among followers of Jesus when he lived. Rather, he was writing primarily to converts, especially Gentiles, who came into his churches only recently from either Judaism or paganism. Paul's emphases on faithfulness toward God, the faithfulness of Jesus, and his moral teachings are primary themes. There is an extensive bibliography for persons interested in more advanced study.

A careful analysis of the texts of Paul's letters shows that in every church there were two main groups of converts: those who were baptized and those being instructed for baptism. Such analysis also makes it possible to determine which parts of each letter were directed toward converts being prepared for baptism and those already baptized. Baptism was the rite by which converts were forgiven of their past sins whereby they were made righteous, with the obligation to remain sinless for the day of Christ's return. Baptized converts became members of a renewed covenant community of God from which persons who continued to sin were expelled. Paul was always more concerned with how converts behaved than with what they believed about Christ. Paul remained a Jew even after he became a member of the group of Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Consequently, his primary message for Gentiles was faithfulness toward God, along with the moral probity of those who believe. Paul eventually developed beliefs about Jesus the Messiah as the Son of God and Lord, in order to win Gentile converts to faithfulness toward God. Being made righteous, the original meaning of Paul's word usually translated as "justified," brings out the depth of Paul's emphasis on the morality of converts. Faithfulness toward God and moral probity are the primary messages in the letters of Paul; therefore, there emerges from this study a concern on the part of Paul for the moral life of believers not heretofore recognized. In turn, the vague doctrine of justification by faith in Christ, is no longer cogent for the twenty-first century.

Paul in the Grip of the Philosophers: The Apostle and Contemporary Continental Philosophy

One of the remarkable developments in the contemporary study of Paul is the dramatic interest in his thought amongst European philosophers. This collection of insights from leading scholars makes accessible a discussion often elusive to those not already conversant in the categories of European philosophy.

This book is a controversial new biography of the apostle Paul that argues for his inclusion in the pantheon of key figures of classical antiquity, along with the likes of Socrates, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and Augustus. It first provides a critical reassessment of the apostle's life in its historical context that focuses on Paul's discourse of authority, which was both representative of its Roman context and provocative to his rivals within Roman society. It then considers the legend that developed around Paul as the history of his life was elaborated and embellished by later interpreters, creating legends that characterized the apostle variously as a model citizen, an imperial hero, a sexual role model, an object of derision and someone to quote from. It is precisely this rewriting of Paul's history into legend that makes the apostle a key transformative figure of classical antiquity.

Picturing Paul in Empire: Imperial Image, Text and Persuasion in Colossians, Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles

Pauline Christianity sprang to life in a world of imperial imagery. In the streets and at the thoroughfares, in the market places and on its public buildings and monuments, and especially on its coins the Roman Empire's imperial iconographers displayed imagery that aimed to persuade the Empire's diverse and mostly illiterate inhabitants that Rome had a divinely appointed right to rule the world and to be honoured and celebrated for its dominion.

Harry O. Maier places the later, often contested, letters and theology associated with Paul in the social and political context of the Roman Empire's visual culture of politics and persuasion to show how followers of the apostle visualized the reign of Christ in ways consistent with central themes of imperial iconography. They drew on the Empire's picture language to celebrate the dominion and victory of the divine Son, Jesus, to persuade their audiences to honour his dominion with praise and thanksgiving.

Key to this imperial embrace were Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles. Yet these letters remain neglected territory in consideration of engagement with and reflection of imperial political ideals and goals amongst Paul and his followers. This book fills a gap in scholarly work on Paul and Empire by taking up each contested letter in turn to investigate how several of its main themes reflect motifs found in imperial images.

The Social-Science Commentary series pioneers an alternative commentary genre, providing in this volume the text of the deutero-Pauline letters and cultural notes on them. The Social-Science Commentary on the Deutero-Pauline Letters provides essential 'reading scenarios' on specific cultural phenomena in these letters, including forgery, normative conflict, paideia (training), and Household Codes. This volume highlights the transformation of the memory of Paul in early Christianity as reflecting the concerns and interest of communities after Paul's death.

Studyi50ng Paul's Letters provides a survey of the most relevant current methods in Paul scholarship. Joseph A. Marchal leads a group of scholars who are also experienced teachers in courses on Paul. More than a series of "how-to" essays in interpretation, each chapter in this volume shows how differences in starting point and interpretive decisions shape different ways of understanding Paul. Each teacher-scholar focuses on what a particular method brings to interpretation and applies that method to a text in Paul's letters, aiming not just at the beginning student but at the "tough choices" every teacher must make in balancing information with critical reflection.

Studying Paul's Letters is organized for use in a single semester course on Paul and is perfect for graduate students, seminarians, and undergraduate students.

In a significant reevaluation of Paul's place in the early Christian story, Timothy Luckritz Marquis explores the theme of travel in the apostle's correspondence. He casts Paul's rhetorical strategies against the background of Augustus' age, when Rome's wealth depended on conquests abroad, the international commerce they facilitated, and the incursion of foreign customs and people they brought about. In so doing, Luckritz Marquis provides an explanation for how Paul created, maintained, and expanded his local communities in the larger, international Jesus movement and shows how Paul was a product of the material forces of his day.

Distinguished biblical scholar Frank Matera here views the theology of the Pauline letters through the lens of the saving grace that Paul experienced at his call and conversion. Focusing on Christology, soteriology, theology, anthropology, ecclesiology, ethics, and eschatology, Matera explores both the unity and the diversity of the thirteen Pauline letters.Written in a clear and coherent style, God's Saving Grace presents students, professors, and pastors with a comprehensive yet concise and accessible overview of the theology found in the entire corpus of Paul's letters.

The Oxford Bible Commentary is a Bible study and reference work for 21st century students and readers that can be read with any modern translation of the Bible. It offers verse-by-verse explanation of every book of the Bible by the world's leading biblical scholars. From its inception, OBC has been designed as a completely non-denominational commentary, carefully written and edited to provide the best scholarship in a readable style for readers from all different faith backgrounds. It uses the traditional historical-critical method to search for the original meaning of the texts, but also brings in new perspectives and insights - literary, sociological, and cultural - to bring out the expanding meanings of these ancient writings and stimulate new discussion and further enquiry. Newly issued in a series of part volumes, the OBC is now available in an affordable and portable format for the commentaries to the Pauline Epistles. Includes a general introduction to using the Commentary, in addition to an introduction to study of the New Testament, and to the Pauline Corpus in particular.

Contours in the Text. Textual Variation in the Writings of Paul, Josephus and the Yahad

This is an examination of Paul's possible awareness of the plurality of Ancient Jewish Scripture. Norton-Piliavsky places Paul's work within the context of ancient Jewish literary practice, bridging the gap between textual criticism and social history in contemporary discussions. The author argues that studies of ancient Jewish exegesis draw on two distinct analytical modes: the text-critical and the socio-historical. He then shows that the two are usually joined together in discussions of ancient Jewish literature arguing that as a result of this commentators often allow the text-critical approach to guide their efforts to understand historical questions. Norton argues that text-critical and historical data must be combined, but not conflated and in this volume sets out a new approach, showing that exegesis was part of an ongoing discussion, which included mutually supporting written and oral practices. Norton shows that Josephus' and Dead Sea sectarians' use of textual variation, like Paul's, belongs to this discussion demonstrating that neither Paul nor his contemporaries viewed Jewish scripture as a fixed literary monolith. Rather, they took part in a dynamic exegetical dialogue, constituted by oral as much as textual modes. Formerly the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement, a book series that explores the many aspects of New Testament study including historical perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and theological, cultural and contextual approaches. The Early Christianity in Context series, a part of JSNTS, examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the third century CE. The series places Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context. "European Seminar on Christian Origins" and "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Supplement" are also part of JSNTS.

Decades after setting the study of Paul on a profoundly new footing with Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress Press, 1977), E. P. Sanders now offers an expansive introduction to the apostle, navigating some of the thorniest issues in scholarship in language accessible to the novice and seasoned scholar alike. Always careful to distinguish what we can know historically from what we may only conjecture, and these from dogmatically driven misrepresentations, Sanders sketches a fresh picture of the apostle as an ardent defender of his own convictions, ever ready to craft the sorts of arguments that now fill his letters but - as Sanders carefully argues - were not the basis for his own beliefs and attitudes. He also gives sustained attention to a historical sketch of Paul's context, particularly Second Temple Judaism, in order to set comparisons of Paul and that context on solid ground. Here are familiar themes from Sanders's earlier work - the importance of works in Paul's thought, the relationship of "plight" and "solution" - in a presentation that reveals a career's reflection, along with new thinking regarding development in Paul's thought. All of the letters are carefully introduced in a text that will prove a worthy guide to the student and interested reader.

Canonizing Paul explores how ancient editorial practices utilized in the publication of corpora (e.g. preparation of texts, selection and arrangement of tracts, and composition and deployment of paratexts) were not only employed to shape editions of Paul's letters (i.e. the Marcionite, Euthalian, and Vulgate), but also their interpretation. By considering the deployment of ancillary materials alongside other editorial practices and exploring the interpretive interplay (and sometimes uneasy negotiation) of text and paratexts, this study fills an often overlooked gap in the field of New Testament textual criticism. Investigation into the Marcionite edition shows how its paratexts introduced Marcion's hermeneutic and, in some measure, justified his editorial principles. The Euthalian edition preferred instead a catechetical and pedagogical goal extending from the deployment of paratexts to the organization of the tracts and a textual arrangement for ease of comprehension. The exploration of text and sometimes disparate paratexts culminates in an investigation of Codex Fuldensis, which transmits the Vulgate textual revision of Paul's letters and its Primum Quaeritur prologue alongside numerous other paratexts such as the Marcionite prologues, Old Latin capitula, capitula drawn from the Euthalian edition, and sundry other paratexts. The incorporation of such diverse paratexts, loosed from their original editions and juxtaposed with later editorial products founded on alternative hermeneutical presuppositions, resulted in interpretive tensions that testify to the physical manuscript as a locus of authority, over which many early Christians were trying to gain interpretive control, if not by altering the text, then by furnishing paratexts. By demonstrating how these practices and interpretive concerns left their mark on these editions of the Corpus Paulinum, this study reveals that editorial practices and hermeneutics were deeply, sometimes inextricably, intertwined.

How did Roman imperial culture shape the environment in which Paul carried out his apostolate? How do the multiple legacies of modern colonialism and contemporary empire shape, illuminate, or obscure our readings of Pauls letters? In The Colonized Apostle Christopher D. Stanley has gathered many of the foremost voices in postcolonial and empire-critical scholarship on Paul to provide a state-of-the-art guide to these questions.

After 30 years a new intensive study on the life, work and theology of the apostle Paul. International research on Paul has led to significant changes in the view on Paul. This includes his theological profile (especially the New Perspective on Paul) but also the social und cultural context in which Paul worked as a missionary and founded communities. Of central importance for all aspects of the new idea of Paul is the comprehension, that traditional anti-Jewish interpretations are not plausible any more.
They are replaced by Paul, as a missionary of peoples on the basis of his Jewish identity and within a Jewish environment of his time.
This book provides a synopsis of the new international perspective on Paul, scrutinizing the new findings as well as the traditional interpretations.

This engaging study shows how Paul's stylized use of the official Roman letter - a form of communication of great social import in his day - played a crucial role in his apostolic ministry, conveying both his self-identity and sense of authority. M. Luther Stirewalt describes the logistics of letter writing in the first-century Mediterranean world and shows how official letters served to substitute for speeches to an audience, to convey executive, official, or bureaucratic matters, or to bring complaints or petitions from citizens to officials. He then shows how Paul structured his apostolic correspondence after these models of writing, drawing evidence directly from seven Pauline epistles: 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Galatians, and Romans. Cutting a new angle on Paul's purposes, his ministry, and his pastoral concerns, Stirewalt's "Paul, the Letter Writer" will appeal to readers of the Bible and ancient history.

The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios

This volume discusses conceptual elements of messianic traditions that are identified in the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul by examining the nature and functions of the divine figure and of the messiah figure. Comparative analysis presented here demonstrates that the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul share specific conceptual elements of messianic traditions. The combination of shared elements is so striking as to preclude the possibility that the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul constituted independent, parallel developments. It cannot be claimed, however, that Paul was familiar with the text of the Parables of Enoch; there are no direct quotes of the Parables anywhere in Paul's Letters. Waddell does however show that Paul was familiar with the conceptual elements of the Enochic messiah, and that Paul developed his concept of the Kyrios out of the Son of Man traditions in the Book of the Parables of Enoch. Waddell specifically argues Pauline christology was at the very least heavily influenced by Enochic Son of Man traditions.

This new work aimed at upper level undergraduates provides an invaluable handbook for students seriously engaging with Paul's life, letters and context. This new coursebook assesses Paul from four key areas. This book is written by several co-authors, all experts in their given fields, to give the most up-to-date and accurate information to readers - but also to present a sense of authorial continuity throughout the book. This book is divided into three main parts; the environment, life, work and person of Paul; Paul's letters and theological themes; and, the reception of Paul and his letters. As such it provides a comprehensive overview of scholarship on Paul and is the perfect handbook for the serious student wishing to engage with some of the most important writings in the New Testament. This book features maps, tables, text-boxes, up-to-date bibliographies and key points are identified throughout.